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Contemplify
Drew Jackson on Touch the Earth, Poetry as a Lifesaver, and the Importance of Lucille Clifton
01:12:12
"In Touch the Earth, Drew Jackson's poetry offers a word-weary world a new language of engagement, disruption, and insight. As with all great poetry, the words are spare, but the literary images loom large, creating indelible impressions on the...
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- [00:06]
A
Welcome to Contemplify where we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. I am your host, Paul Swanson. Today I'm in conversation with Drew Jackson. Drew Jackson is a poet, speaker, and public theologian. He's author of God Speaks Through Wombs, poems on God's unexpected Coming, and also Touch the Poems on the Way. His work has been widely published. Drew received his BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and his master's in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He currently works as the director of Mission Integration for the center for Action and Contemplation and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughters. In our conversation, Drew and I talk about the seeds of poetry planted through the lyrical mastery of Nas, as well as his immersion into sacred text, why Lucille Clifton's poetry should be explored by all, his own mystical lineage, and so much more. As always, you can visit contemplified.com for the show notes on this episode and learn more about Drew's work over@drewejackson.com that's drewejackson.com now join me in raising a glass to my guest today, Drew Jackson. So I'm going to kick it off with a question of place and context, of where are we finding you today and what is the setting that you're in right now?
- [01:44]
B
Yeah, so I am in Brooklyn, New York, in Flatbush, and we're at our two bedroom apartment on Clarkson Avenue. My daughters are home right now. They didn't have school today. Parent teacher conferences. So they're fighting boredom at the moment.
- [02:16]
A
I love that. Do you encourage them in that boredom? Like just my own bias here of like, I feel like so much creativity comes out of that boredom. And I know with my kids, when they're bored, I'm just like, lean into it. How do you respond with that classic childhood cry of dad, I'm bored?
- [02:40]
B
Yeah, lean into it. One of the things I love to say to them is, it's good to learn how to be bored. So one of my daughters is really trying to learn how to crochet and she just has been watching like YouTube videos just in her boredom, trying to figure out how to do it herself.
- [03:05]
A
Wow.
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B
And yeah, so it's to your point. It does really, I think fuel creativity can also fuel conflict and arguments between siblings.
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A
Yes. Yeah, that is well said and is often an understatement when those conflicts erupt.
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B
Yeah.
- [03:36]
A
Thanks for setting that scene about where you are today as we were talking about. This podcast focuses on kindling the examined Life for contemplatives in the world. When you hear that word contemplative or that identity or moniker, how does that relate to you or your work? If you think it does?
- [04:00]
B
Yeah. It's a word that I would definitely use to describe my own spirituality and my work as a poet, even if at times I don't know what I mean when I say it. But it is a way of being and seeing the world that for me really comes down to. It comes down to paying attention both to my interior landscape and to what's happening around me or in the space between myself and another person, the space between myself and the ground that I'm standing on. So it is. It's paying attention to those in between spaces and allowing myself to be fully present to all of it without judgment and holding the tensions of what is so that I can respond in a way that is present to love. That's how I would put it.
- [05:30]
A
Beautifully said. Yeah. In that attention, how does that manifest in whether it's disciplined practice of the ancient Christian contemplative tradition or other traditions or artistic expressions or philosophical disciplines? How does that show up for you? What does that look like when you practice that as a discipline?
- [05:59]
B
So there's the practice of silence centering prayer that I engage in as a daily practice. But I think what's even more for me, what I have been more, as of late, really trying to pay attention to, is the ways in which I'm carrying that practice into my day. So how do I carry interior silence with me outside of my 20 minute sit? And that's something that is as much practice for me as anything else. Right. It's Brother Lawrence is practicing the presence of God. Right. It's that doing the dishes. What's happening in me. What does it mean to be present to this practice of washing dishes and putting them away, this practice of making my bed? How is this holy and sacred? And poetry as a practice helps me do. Like it draws me into that kind of attention because I know from having read and written that so many poems just emerge out of the. The smallness of things. Yeah.
- [07:36]
A
I love that you're speaking my language. From Brother Lawrence of the Dishes to poetry. And that image of you being struck by a small detail that turns into something on the page. And I also think one of the things that I value and admire and respect about your poetry as well is there are those details. They're often like a pinhole into like a wider global conundrum, trauma, disorder or beauty. But so it's Fun to hear you articulate how you show up in the smallness of things and then how that practice of carrying into the rest of your day, and maybe this is one of just the gifts of poetry, too, is like, as a reader of your work, we're gifted with the outcome of that. That's just kind of striking me as we're talking here, how. And this is a bit of an assumption, but knowing that you've had these kind of dedicated practices and this work as a poet, how has these type of practices change your life? Is there a way you can tell a difference from before you kind of leaned into these practices and after? Or has it been more gradual in evolution?
- [09:05]
B
Yeah, it's a really good question. And I don't know that I've ever thought about it in those terms. It's definitely changed me what it's done. I think more than anything else is I am. And this is why, in some ways, I say poetry has saved my life. Right. And because I am not a person.
- [09:35]
A
Who.
- [09:38]
B
By nature is very in tune with my own interior world. I have to, like, if you were to ask me, how are you doing? For me to answer that question takes a lot. It takes a lot for me to really access what's going on. And the practice of presence, and through particularly presence through poetry, has given me a tool. It's giving me something to be able to access what's really happening in me and around me in ways that for a long time were foreign to me. It wasn't how I was moving through the world. And so I can really. I would say that that's definitely a marked change for me. And beginning these practices in this particular way.
- [10:41]
A
That's beautiful. I love that. I have another question here. Just on your own formation. If someone were going to teach a class on the formation of Drew Jackson, what would be the three mandatory readings or pieces of art or places that would definitely be on that side?
- [11:01]
B
Oh, man. So you said the three mandatory readings.
- [11:08]
A
Or works, the things that formed you. Yeah.
- [11:12]
B
Oh, man.
- [11:13]
A
It can change tomorrow. It's just for today.
- [11:15]
B
Just for today? Yeah.
- [11:17]
A
Just for this moment?
- [11:18]
B
Yeah. Wow. So for this moment, I'll say NASA Zic, Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited and Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation.
- [11:45]
A
Can you walk me through? At which stage of your life were you introduced to each one of those, or did they overlap? How did those first reach your life?
- [11:54]
B
Oh, I was introduced to Nas and Illmatic pretty young because I have older brothers who listen to hip hop. And so I just have, I have those early memories of growing up and hearing hip hop in, in their cars as I'm like in the backseat riding with them or. But it really wasn't until like high school that I listened to that album and sat with it. And it was, I mean, it was just the, the lyricism of it all, the storytelling of it and the way that Nas was able to articulate his view of New York from his perspective as a 19 year old kid, just. There was just something that captured me about that. And so, yeah, so that drew me in pretty early on and I think it made me curious about. It made me curious about words in general and how you can. What you can do with them, how you can make music out of words. So for Howard Thurman, I was introduced to thurman, my early 20s, so tail end of college, I think came across Thurman's work. There was a friend of mine who was a seminary student at the time, and he was the one who put me onto Thurman. And it was a. The first. I think Thurman was one of the first ones that I felt like as I'm reading him, I kind of felt like, oh, this is. He feels like spiritual kin. He feels like someone who, like, I know in a real sense both his. The way he's talking about the way, like articulating the way of Jesus being for those whose backs are against the wall and holding that together with this, this mystical way. And it was just like I never read somebody or encountered somebody who was quite holding that mix of things, but I identified with it so deeply. And then Merton was a little later. I read Merton a little later after that. And yeah, I think he, for me was the one who really just opened me up to the idea of what is named contemplation. Like it was. I just didn't have a name for it or he just kind of. He just opened up that whole world for me in a way that I just didn't know was there. And it was so formative for me because I. Because I think what's interesting for me is that like, so I grew up in, you know, I grew up in church context, super conservative fundamentalist Baptist church. And no one in that context is talking about the mystics, no one's talking about contemplatives. And. And at the same time I had, like, my mom was a mystic, like that was her spirituality and she'd never used that word. But it was as I look back and I think about my experience of her. I was like, oh, that's what she was living and embodying and was her experience of the divine. And so. So I felt like I grew up in that Baptist context and then kind of bounced around. Like, I had a lot of different denominational experiences, but I never felt like I knew what home for me was. And like, the most home I felt was when I would sit with my mom and she would talk about certain things. But I didn't know that there was any sort of lineage or tradition that was linking kind of what her experience is to something broader than that. It wasn't until I read Thurman and then Merton and some others that, like, oh, yeah, I will say that she did, in my late teens, start to encourage me. She did start to read some mystics, and she started to put me on. Like, I remember I'm like, I'm, like, 17, and she puts St. John of the Cross on my nightstand and just like, hey, check this out. Just read this. Let's talk.
- [17:53]
A
Just right to the deep end there, eh?
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B
Yeah, just right in. Just right in. So, yeah, I think. But Merton kind of tied some things together for me.
- [18:05]
A
Yeah, that's marvelous. It's fun to hear you talk about your mother and the ways in which she was practicing this and then seeing some. And then, like, that's almost like mystic recognizing mystic. Like, oh, here's St. John of the Cross. I know this language. Let me bring this into the family. Did your interest for poetry stem from the language of the mystics, or was it more hip hop? Or was it just all of the lyricism of life that brought it together? Is there particular pinpoint that you can kind of draw from?
- [18:45]
B
Yeah, I would start with hip hop, for sure. That was the entry point for me. That was where the spark was first. And. And I think, too, like, my mom was a poet herself. She was a writer. So just kind of being around it. She was, I think, just being in an environment where creativity and art were something that. That was her life. That's what she did. So being around it. And lastly, I think it was scripture. Like, I. Like, what drew me to scripture was the poetic nature of portions of it. Like, I was just drawn to it. And I memorized so much scripture and so growing. I guess one of the things about growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist context is, like, you. Scripture memorization is a huge thing, and particularly memorizing scripture in the King James. Right? Yeah. And it just has that quality to it. Right. Where, like, I spent so much time with it and just kind of having those things swirling in my, my head. And so I think that those are some of the early things that really turned me on to poetry. And it really wasn't until much later where that began to take shape. I started to write. But all of my writing early on was just. Was lyrics I would just write. I didn't really get into poetry until honestly, like, like my late 20s, early 30s. Like.
- [20:58]
A
So that's so great because I mean, I love the way you articulate that because clearly it's like been a part of you and growing in you and then like now it's more outward facing probably than it ever has been. But it's fun to hear how that was like always kind of interstitched to your person and in your lineage. There's something about like the stereotype of a poet. And there's ways in which like, I almost put posts in like two camps. There's those that I'm drawn to and then there's those that I'm like, yeah, I walk away from for life. And you and your poetry definitely draw me in. And I'm curious thinking about the ways in which. A bit of a tangent here. I kind of blame the ways in which poetry is often taught in school where it's like the most stilted or stultified versions that have value at a particular time and period. But the poetry itself is so expansive and I feel like you gotta fall in love with poetry before you can. For me, even learning to respect parts of the poetic tradition that I do not like or do not or don't connect for me. So when you tell people you're a poet, do you ever have to unhinge someone of what their idea of a poet is or should be or what poetry is?
- [22:38]
B
100%. Honestly, my experience is that I think there are probably numerous reasons as to why this is. But when I tell, like most people are surprised when I tell them I'm a poet. My movement through the world doesn't come off to people as poet. Like, I'm not like, that's. I don't. Growing up, I was an athlete. I was like, that was all I did that was like. And usually people don't put that together with poet. Like, that's just not. And so I think, yeah, even that in and of itself, like, if I tell, I tell people I play basketball, they're not shocked. Like, that's not a thing. Right. But it's like, oh, a poet. Like, that's not what people's first read of Me is usually. So I think that that, in a way has caused, like, it. My experience of it anyway, is that that has caused more intrigue than anything, is that people are like, really? And I don't know. I mean, then I get the people who are, I don't like poetry, or I don't. Or I have a really hard time with poetry. And so. And I think to your point, like, the way that we're taught poetry in school does not. I don't think it lends itself to kind of helping grow a love for poetry. It just. I know it didn't in me, like, school was not what turned me on to poetry, just wasn't. I can't remember the poetry that I read in. In high school.
- [24:41]
A
Right.
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B
So. But yeah, so I get into those conversations and I always just find myself encouraging people to, oh, they'll ask me usually, well, who do you think I should read? What are some suggestions? Because it's always like, people will say, I want to like poetry. I feel like I should love it, but I just haven't been able to get into it. So they'll ask me for suggestions and I'll give them suggestions. And then I always tell them, like, you have to keep reading different poets. They're different in the same way that you listen to different musicians, read different poets, read their poetry, see what sings to you, what resonates with you. Don't just stop because you don't like this poet or this poem, or you feel like you don't quote, unquote, get it. Which is always the thing. It's like, I don't get it.
- [25:45]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I think that's part of how we're taught, is that you're taught to approach poetry through this lens of, like, what does this mean? What is this poet trying to say? And I don't think that's actually the. The way to teach poetry, because it does. Because at the end of the day, like, that doesn't matter. It doesn't. It's. How is this line. How is this series of lines, this stanza, this. The music of this poem? How is that engaging you in this particular moment in your life? What is it that is resonating? What is standing out? What questions does it give birth to? What's drawing you in or asking the question, why are you. Why is it repelling you? Like, what is. Right. So I think poetry can do all of that, but when our focus is on what does this mean? What does this poet mean by this? It almost is. You're losing the magic of what this thing is. Right. It's like trying to analyze a flower, petal by petal, and plucking all the petals off because you're trying to figure this thing out. And then you're left looking at this thing like, I don't get it.
- [27:10]
A
Yeah, perfect analogy. Yes, that rings true. Thanks for sharing that. I would love to ask you to read a poem, if you don't mind. We were talking before we hit record just how I spent lent with your book Touch the Earth. And it's a marvelous collection of poetry that walks us through about. Why don't you share the context of that book in your own words? How would you frame. I'd love to hear the origin story of how that book came to be and how it's connected to wombs or not your first book?
- [27:57]
B
Yeah. Well, to me they are one project in my mind. So God Speaks through Wombs is the first of the two. These are poems that are in conversation with the Gospel of Luke and they really emerged out of like there were several different things that kind of converged in one. So I started writing what would become God Speaks through Wounds during the pandemic and really just found myself on one side. I am wrestling with the questions that we're all wrestling with around what's happening in the world. So there's the COVID 19 pandemic and there's this. Everything that's going on with the unveiling, I'll say, of the still present racism and white supremacy in our country through the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and like a lot of us, finding myself in so many conversations about those things. And as a black man, I would often, you know, I was often asked to speak into these things and have conversations around these things. And part of the experience of that though is like you're naming this experience of like, this isn't new. Right? This isn't. This is always. This has been here. These have been our experiences. This has been my shape, vulnerably sharing my own story and like almost being met with these feelings of like, are you making this up? Like, are you making it more than it actually is? Are these isolated incidents or is this right? And so what I found myself longing for was to be in conversation with people who I wasn't having to convince that oppression was a thing. Yeah, yeah. And aside from talking with friends of mine, people I know, like, I actually found myself in conversation with the scriptures and with these people whose stories are like, in the Gospel of Luke in particular, I was gravitating toward Luke and remembering that, right. Like, Scripture is a collection of writings that emerged from people who knew what it meant to live on the underside of history. They were not like, Rome did not write the text. And.
- [31:28]
A
It'D be a very different story.
- [31:29]
B
It'd be a very different story. So I just found myself in conversation with that and wanting to dialogue with Scripture in a way that was, okay, let me bring my full self and all of my questions and all of my wrestlings in this moment to the text. Let's talk. Let's see what comes out of that. This is not an attempt to write a commentary. I'm not interested in that. Like, let me just see. The other side of it also was I was at the time. So when I was pastoring at the church, we were going through a section in the Psalms and looking at book two of the Psalter, right? So the Psalter being broken up into five different books or sections. And so there is a particular way of understanding the Psalms as being. And those five books as being in conversation with the five books of Torah, that they're not commentaries on them, but that if you read them, you can see and hear the conversation between. So as I'm reading through book two, and I'm hearing Psalms, like, about thirsting for God in a dry and weary land where there is no water, and all of those sorts of images and things, I'm like, oh, that is very different when you read it with the backdrop of the Exodus than if I'm just reading it as some personal reflection on where I'm at in this moment. It can be all of those things. But when I read it with the backdrop of Exodus, there's this whole other world that comes into view and story that's being told and narrated and interacted with. And so I was just like, okay, what would it look like and sound like if the Gospels were to give rise to poetry today? Like, how. What would that. What would that feel like? And so I just started kind of writing in that vein. And so God speaks through wombs, which journeys through the first eight chapters of Luke was doing that, and then touch the earth is continuation of that. There are differences, nuances in terms of what I was doing in particular, because the Gospel of Luke shifts at that point, right? When you get to chapter nine, there's a shift in the way the story's being told, the focus of things. Whereas you have the first eight chapters, you have a lot of. Obviously you have the early chapters with the birth narrative and all of that. But then you have a lot of Jesus's teaching, the disciples, parables being told, things like that. In chapter nine, there's a shift in two. Two primary ways. One is the first time that Jesus sends his disciples out to then begin to put into practice all that I've been teaching you. And you also see Jesus shift and begin to march toward Jerusalem. Like he's headed in a direction now. Right? And his disciples are on the way with him, even if they don't fully understand what they're on the way to, but they're on this way with him. And so in Touch the Earth, there's a lot more. I would say there's a lot more of me personally that comes through in the poems there because I am wrestling with what does it mean for me to take these things that I've been taught around life and love and faith, what it means to be human and bring them to earth, like touch the earth, you know, with those things, like what is. So I'm wrestling with that as I'm writing these poems. In the first book, you'll find a lot more what we would call Persona poems. Getting inside of particular characters in the narrative and writing, if I was writing from their perspective and things like that. So trying some different things there. So that's some of what's happening here.
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A
I love that. I love the way that you just painted the picture for me, too, of the Psalms as, like, a soundtrack to the Hebrew Bible and thinking about.
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B
How.
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A
This is what you've done with your poetry, with the Gospels. It's almost like a soundtrack of relationality to the moment we're in right now. It's such a vibrant conversation. When you're in deep conversation with the sacred text and the tradition and right now and your own personal experience in history. It's so lovely. I'd love to ask you to read a poem right now so folks can get a taste of one of your poems from Touch the Earth.
- [37:13]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. I will start by reading these bags. So this. So each one of the poems is written in conversation with a reflecting and reflection on a particular passage of scripture or set of verses. So this one is written in conversation with Luke 14, verses 25 through 33. It's called these Bags. These bags I carry I hold them dear they are full of things near to my heart Things I have earned Things I have learned Things I have loved I carry what I've inherited Cherishing what my parents have bequeathed to me Ways of being that I thought were all my Own my tone of speech, the way I process grief, what I use to relieve the pain, the warmth I feel when I recall the voice of my mother calling me by my nickname. I carry my genesis with me. There are bags I have since added along the way, the contents of which I would rather not name. I shoulder this shame with me wherever I go. My bags remain with me. I never sit them down. I keep a close eye on them when strangers are around. But long is the road, and the cost of carrying is far more than the cost of letting go.
- [39:08]
A
Man. Thank you for reading that. Just hearing it in your voice and letting it land on me right now. When you read a poem like that, does it sink back to the inspiration of what sparked it? Or do you. Or has it changed since that moment when it first came as a seed of an idea and you put it to the ink, to the page.
- [39:41]
B
It changes. I mean, when I wrote that one, I think the seed in some ways remains the same. But how you. When you read back on a poem that you wrote at a particular time, sort of the way that that is manifesting itself in you right now feels different. So. And it's also like, with these poems in particular, and the ones that are interacting with Luke and Scripture, it's a particular thing because it's like, oh, this was how I was interacting with this particular text at that time, right? So this section about the cost of discipleship, the cost of. And right, there's in particular, Jesus says, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions, right? And thinking about what is it that I cling to, that I possess, that the invitation is to set down, to let go of, to. And so for that in and of itself is something that is going to change when I read this five years from now. It has to. It should, like I hope it does when I read this. But the imagery of carrying bags, right? And I'll say, one of the things I'll say about the poem is this. Like, I actually, if you look at it on the page, it starts with. There is. It's like a paragraph of text that as you go on in the poem, it gets a little bit more sparse. And the idea of that, even for me, was just that as, like, when I read the poem, I want to feel the journey of letting go. Letting go of the need to even name all of the things, the words. I want to let go of verbiage as I go. I want to let go of the need to say and express and do right and so the need to feel like I have to explain myself or all of that. So I know that when I wrote this, I was in particular, I was in the middle of transitioning out of pastoring. And one of the things that I was. I knew I was carrying and, like, processing what it would be to let. Let go of is how steeped my own identity was in pastoral ministry as a vocation, having grown up, that being the thing that was like, this is what I was going to do. Since I was three years old, hearing that over and over again and really processing. I came to a point of really processing, is this actually what I am supposed to be doing? Or is this me living out somebody else's dream and I'm like, actively processing what it's going to be like to let go of some of these things? And also, as I'm picking up this vocation of poet as something, or I don't even say picking it up, say, really claiming this is something that's been part of me for a long time, but not really knowing it, so rediscovering it in a new way. One of the things that I really drew me to poetry at the time was when as a pastor and a preacher, the thing that you're expected to do is to explain, explain, make the text clear, make the thing clear, say the thing. So sermons are always probably too long because we say too much. Right. We're always saying, I would agree with that statement. And so what poetry was inviting me to do was to let go of the need for explanation, let go of the need to explain yourself, let go of the need to feel like you need to be understood. Right. And so, yeah, so I think all of that was happening for me at the moment while writing this. Yeah. Wow.
- [44:49]
A
Thank you for sharing that. There's so much life in that poem to me of. And, like, think about how I come to it as a reader. Like, there's so many overlapping kind of meta themes of, like, what am I clinging to? There's the things that I love dearly that I've inherited or been given to carry, that I just cherish. And then there's the resentments that I say I don't want, but I carry them with me because they satisfy something in me that is. That cost me something, and I need to let them go and do that work. So thank you for reading that poem and for the. I had a wondering about the transition of the paragraph to the. And it's fun to hear how that the shedding played into that as well with the words.
- [45:43]
B
Mm.
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A
I told you three poems that I would love to hear. But I also. If there's one that's sparking interest to you or that that is coming to mind, I. I'm all. I'm game to pivot to something else that. That seems to be speaking to you too.
- [45:59]
B
Yeah. You said. What was. You said. Which lives.
- [46:06]
A
Yep. And instructions for the freedom struggle.
- [46:11]
B
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Which lives? So this is Luke 13, 12, 17. And aren't we all pro life? Maybe. Or not. I can't decide. Maybe the answer is sometimes for some lives, it isn't a matter of for or against, but of which. Whose lives are worth saving pounding the pavement for in protest? Or maybe the question is life or profit? Or rather, from which lives will we profit?
- [47:03]
A
That's a poem that I love just to leave hanging, to let people meditate on. And that's a poem to walk around with for a day or two and let it examine one. But if there's anything you would like to say about it, is there, whether it's the seed of it, the genesis of it, or if you want that just to hang with people in their own interiority. As to me, it is worth 10 pages of journaling with those questions that you're asking in the context of one's life and the national conversation in the global history. I think powerhouse.
- [47:47]
B
I think what I was most interested in was that this very present conversation is an ancient conversation. It's not new. It just shifts and takes different form. Right. So this is where. Bringing it into conversation with Luke, it's like this whole interaction where Jesus heals somebody who has an ailment, but he does it on the Sabbath. And there's this whole. Everybody gets upset. All the religious leaders get upset because Jesus is healing on the Sabbath. And then he says. He calls them hypocrites. And he says, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the. The manger and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for 18 long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day? And he just leaves it at that. And, like, to me, he's doing this thing where he's. He's calling out their hypocrisy, but he's doing it in a way where he's like, actually, I want you to sit with these questions. I want you to consider what it means for the Sabbath to be given as a gift for humanity, and that it's an invitation that it's always been an invitation to be. For life, to remember what it means to be alive, to be human, to be in relationship and how. So just like these questions have. Are things that have been around for so long and what are we willing to go to bat for? Who are we willing to go to bat for in terms of the value of their lives and raising our voices and protesting for. And I don't know, it's just like all of these questions are. I think they're perpetual questions. They're not questions that are like, okay, now we have the answer. They're ones that are constantly going to be coming up against us as human beings and cultures and societies at different points in time. Every time there's a major war or every time there's a. It's like the question of why are we willing to step in here and not hear. Why are we willing to raise our voices for this and not them? Why are we. Why don't we just sit with the questions? So that's all. I think this is what this poem is doing, is just saying sit with the questions longer.
- [50:59]
A
Yeah. I so appreciate that. And I love how you circulate with like, what could be a very abstract question of like. But that you also concretize it, like to personalize it so that it doesn't get lost in abstraction of just that both can be in that tension. I know that we've talked about this before in a previous conversation about.
- [51:24]
B
The.
- [51:24]
A
Impact of Rilke and living the question. Why does that speak to you, Rilke's invitation to live the question. Because it feels like a kind of an outflow of how this connects to this poem.
- [51:39]
B
Yeah. Because to me, it's. What I've discovered is I could say a lot of things. I'm realizing. So to go back to my own upbringing in terms of the faith community that I was brought up in, it was so centered on certainty. It was so you. That was faith with certainty. That's what it was. And if you didn't know if there were any questions or any doubts or any right, that was a red flag. That was a. And so result of that is you're given a lot of these kind of like, pat answers about things. There's no invitation to ask questions of anything. So there's no invitation to ask questions of scripture as an authority within the community. There's no invitation to ask questions of the people who hold power and authority in the community. You just have to accept what they say. You accept what the pastor says, you accept what the right. And so one of the gifts that I received in that was having parents who were not afraid to ask the questions. And seeing that, seeing my mom say things to me like, just because the pastor said it don't mean it's true, right? And so I was given permission, I was given permission to ask those questions. And so coming to discover that that was so central to Jesus own sort of way that he was walking with and seeking to form the disciples who were following him, was to introduce them to more questions than giving them answers, easy answers about things. If you track, if you walk with their journey, you just see that over and over again. It's like question after question after question after question after question. And by the end of the thing, and that's. I mean I can read this poem at the end of the book, but for me it really kind of sums up in this whole journey of following Jesus on the way is an invitation to sit with the questions again and longer, stay with them and stay with them to live the questions, as Roka says, to love the questions. And that maybe perhaps along in some distant day you will live your way into the answer. But the point is to live everything. To live everything. So for me, that's why poetry does that. Poetry is always like when I read poetry, I don't go to poetry because I need an answer. I go because I've got big questions or because. And poetry doesn't give me an answer. It just gives rise to more questions, often more wonderings, more imaginings, more curiosity. So I think that's for me, what it is, why I come back to it over and over and over.
- [55:06]
A
Yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Quick question. Are you game to read Instructions for the Freedom Struggle? Yeah.
- [55:22]
B
So this one. Luke 10:4 12 instructions for the freedom struggle. 1. Empty out the money bag. Freedom cannot be bought, but it can be sold away. Inscribe this line on your insides. Relationships are the currency of life. 2. Attire yourself with nothing but the finery of dust. The less you have, the harder it is to be weighed down.
- [56:02]
A
3.
- [56:04]
B
Bolt the goal in view. Let nothing unfasten your vision for from what's ahead. 4. Drink to the dregs. Every ounce of hospitality. Scrape each crumb from the plate of love set before you. 5. Know when to bless. Know when to dissent. There is an art to protest. Draw your lines with precision.
- [56:39]
A
Number five is just like that is. It is a beautiful ending. There's those two lines I feel like. I mean the whole poem is fantastic, but know when to bless no one to dissent. Like, I love the line being drawn. And of course, it's coming directly from or inspired, ripped off from Jesus instructions. I always love that story of, like, you're going out, fellas. Here's what. We're going to operate a little bit differently. And then the way that you've brought this into poetic form, and it feels as radical today as it does in reading that text. Yeah.
- [57:26]
B
The other thing, too is it was. As much as it was in conversation with the text of Luke 10, it was also in conversation with the student movement during the civil rights. The civil rights movement. So, like, the students being prepared for Freedom Summer. Right. Them being prepared to go sit at lunch counters, to go sit in, to go. And there was very real training and instruction into what it meant to be sent out in that way. So I was just kind of in that space, which is why the instructions for the freedom struggle. Right. But also, it's like I'm wanting to reframe how we think about what Jesus was doing with his disciples. Right. Like, it was the same freedom struggle. It's the same that freedom struggle that line runs through. So, yeah, all of that.
- [58:31]
A
I love that. And that deep sense of instruction and preparation for what is to come, for the unknown. It's not just walking into the struggle, the freedom struggle, without being prepared to count the cost along the way. And, yeah, it's such a vibrant poem. There's a lot of your poetry. Like, it brings up for me the sense of. I don't even know if I have the right language for it, but it's. There's an urgency for more of life in conversation with ancient texts. And it's almost like a time machine for me, because it's like I go back to the Gospels afresh. Like, that's part of why I so enjoyed walking with your book through Lent, was being able to. Then when I'd read the Gospel of the day in that particular day, being able to just engage in a different way and having the vividness of that imagination. And I'm reminded of the translator of Rumi's work, a la Liza Gifore, where she talked about. I didn't know that Rumi was a preacher who left preaching to become a poet. And I thought that was such. There's something that I think about with you as well. But how it just that journey from, like, having to explain more to kind of delighting in the mystery without removing any of, like, the fierceness of what it means to be human and seek truth, mercy and justice. I realize I just compared you to Rumi. I feel like.
- [60:31]
B
That might be some big shoes to fill. I didn't know that about Rumi, though.
- [60:37]
A
Yeah, I just learned that last year, and I thought it was, like, the thing. One of the things I took away from that is, like, man, I want more preachers to turn into poets with that sense of invitation to deep love. If knowing that you filled the role wearing. There's. You still are a pastor at heart in that sense of, like, your care and love for people. But knowing that the official role of, say, a pastor or a priest in that role, what guidance would you have them would you offer to folks who are fulfilling that necessary and beautiful role to invite more of a poetic imagination into that work of preaching?
- [61:26]
B
I mean, one sounds very simple, but read poetry. So start there reading. Yeah. I try to get pastors to be consumers of poetry because it does change. I think it changes the way that you approach. It changes the way you approach a lot of things, but in particular, like, the preaching moment. The challenge is that we have, like, the culture, the Western Christian culture has been so shaped to demand answers. And so you have people who come into churches who are. Your expectation is that the pastor's gonna be the answer person. Like, that is the expectation. And so then it's like, the pastor's gotta live into that. And so it becomes this thing where it's like, the expectation. I gotta meet that expectation. I gotta have some answer for this thing. Yeah. And I think that the only way that that's broken. I think that pastors have a responsibility there to say, like, how do I resist that and lean into the mystery, be okay with changes the way you teach the text. Right. I think that has a whole lot to do with, like, so many of us as pastors, preachers, do not know how to read scripture through, like, through a poetic lens. We're not taught how to do, like. And so we have to say this text means this when it's like, yes and yes and yeah, you know, and we're not comfortable with that. And so I think allowing yourself to be stretched in that way, looking at the text through new eyes with that poetic. But also the community, I think, as congregants, how can we also hold a different expectation of our faith communities, that they are places that are not necessarily about giving me an answer.
- [64:10]
A
Yeah, well said.
- [64:11]
B
But being on a journey with those who are asking the questions together. So I think it becomes a communal thing where we're orienting to faith and spirituality in a different way. And I think we're coming to a point, an inflection point now, where people are growing weary of the answers that they've received in their faith communities and the insufficient nature of those answers up against some of the great cosmic questions that are facing us. And questions that don't, we all know, don't have easy answers. And so when someone tries to give us an easy answer, it's such a turn off. Like, why? Like, I don't. Right. So. So I really think we're at a point where we're longing for mystery, we're longing for those questions. And so that's why I would say, as pastors, like, let's lean into what that means. What is the invitation of the moment in that regard? How is that part of our journey of formation and transformation?
- [65:32]
A
I love that. Thank you. That's a way to wrap up. I would love to ask this one question, because I always love to ask poets this as well, is who's one poet that you are enjoying or steeped in that you feel like more people should know about?
- [65:50]
B
Hmm. It's hard for me to not always say, Lucille Clifton.
- [65:57]
A
Yeah.
- [65:58]
B
I just always find myself returning to her work. Always. I wish more people knew about her. I wish more people sat with her work. Like, when I think about, I feel like every, in a way, every poet is a theologian because poets are. Whether they say that they are people of faith or would consider themselves spiritual or not, they're always interacting with these larger questions of this. What we're all living inside of, and these questions of the divine. And like. And so poets are approaching those from a place of genuine curiosity, which is what I love about poets. And like Lucille Clifton, she just has a way of doing that, in such few words, of bringing her full self to it. And so I just, I would say go sit with Lucille Clifton for a while.
- [67:21]
A
Great recommendation. That's fantastic. I'm going to ask you one more question. And how would you feel about ending with reading your poem Ascension?
- [67:31]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [67:32]
A
So before we get to Ascension, a question I always like to end my conversations with is, if you were going to pair our conversation with a drink, what would be your drink of choice and why?
- [67:44]
B
Oh, that's good.
- [67:47]
A
Got to keep it embodied.
- [67:50]
B
Yeah. An Old Fashioned. And you want me to say why?
- [68:00]
A
Yeah, I like this.
- [68:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. An Old Fashioned. I think it's a drink that is a. It's one of those things that's like, oh, this is an old. It's been around. It's kind of a staple. It's one of those things. And yet when you come back to it, there's always like, oh, this is why I love this thing. Right? This is why I love this thing. And I feel like that is this conversation even as we're talking about poetry and ancient texts, scriptural text. It's like, how can this thing that's been around for so long keep showing up and inviting me into new life and coming alive in new ways. And so yeah, I think that's why Old fashioned.
- [68:55]
A
Yeah, I love that. I look forward to the day when we can maybe cling some old fashioned.
- [69:01]
B
Let's do it.
- [69:02]
A
I know you get to see you in a few weeks. Hopefully the occasion arises. How does it sound to close with Ascension?
- [69:10]
B
Let's do it. Ascension. So it is reflecting on what it sounds like the ascension moment. Ascension. It's the last poem in touch the earth. And it opens with a epigraph from Morgan Parker in her poem Exclamation Point where she says, we are the revolutionary poem. Exclamation point. You don't have to go home, but this is only the start. The good part is what comes next. Ascension. And this is what poetry does. It carries us. It invites us into a story, unfinished, saying, write the next stanza. It gives us no plan, no blueprint for the future, but simply asks us to witness, take it in and declare what we have seen. It flies away but does not leave. Its presence remains long after the page has been turned, long after the last word spoken. It leaves us with questions gazing towards heaven for answers, but no answer descends. Its intent to get us to sit with the questions again.
- [70:52]
A
Damn, that's the perfect ending. Thank you, Drew.
- [70:56]
B
Thank you, Paul.
- [70:57]
A
Such a joy to be in conversation.
- [70:59]
B
Yeah.
- [71:05]
A
Thank you for listening to this slow cooked episode of Contemplify. May its delights spark wonder and may any sour patches be sweetened by their folly. Head over to contemplify.com to find the show notes for this episode. Sign up for the monthly Contemplify non required reading list and also the weekly contemplative practice. Lo Fi and hushed viewer enjoying Contemplify. Rate and review it on your podcast player. The Internet tells me this helps spread the contemplative cheer. The theme song for Contemplify is called Langside by Charles Ends and Darren Hovius. Fellas, thanks as always and of course I am looking forward to bringing you more musings and more conversations with contemplatives kindling the examined life in the world. Until then, be well.